President-elect Buhari appeared to have dashed the hopes of the
governors elected on the platform of the APC when he rejected their
plans to submit a ministerial list to him.
The APC governors, led by Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State, had,
last Tuesday, visited Buhari in Abuja to pledge loyalty and make some
demands. At the meeting, some requests were placed on the table openly,
while the request to drop the list of possible ministers came up for
discussion behind the closed door.
Sources close to the meeting between the governors and General Buhari
indicated that the state chief executives came out of the visit with
heavy minds.
Planning to maintain the tradition already instituted by the Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP) where the state governors as party leaders in the
states are requested to submit list of possible ministers and
Ambassadorial appointees to the president, the governors threw the
request at Buhari.
But it was learnt that the General rejected the proposal and declared
that the Constitution does not mandate him to take a list of ministerial
nominees from them.
The president-elect was also said to have rejected the call for a
bailout for the states that have been unable to pay salaries, with a
source informing Sunday Tribune that the General flatly rejected the
proposal, saying the he was aware the Federal Government was not owing
the states their allocations.
A source close to the discussion told the Sunday Tribune that General
Buhari told the governors that those of them in their second terms could
not complain about the state of government finances, as they have all
been collecting allocations from the Federal Government all along.
The source quoted Buhari as saying that “I do not think we can discuss
that issue of Ministerial list. The Constitution clearly does not
mandate me to take a list from the governors. To me, the governors
should concentrate on getting good hands to help them in discharging
their duties in the states.”
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